Smoky Joe's Cafe

by Bryce Courtenay

  I get back to the cafe and tell Wendy.

  ‘Thommo,’ she says, ‘Just understand, if they say no and you go on with it, you’re out of my life. I love you, darling, but I’m not going to lose both you and Anna without being involved. Without having a say in the matter.’

  ‘Wendy,’ I say desperately. ‘It ain’t gunna work anyway. We ain’t the blokes we used to be. We’re all crook, we’ve got rashes and skin blisters and chloracne and the sweats, we’re even scared to go to bed at night. Gazza was saying last night, and he wasn’t on his own, when a helicopter goes over his house he dives under the bed. Look at us, Shorty, Bongface and Nam Tran are the only three who haven’t got their gut hangin’ over their belt like a sack of spuds. We’re not The Dirty Dozen, we’re a bunch of screwed-up Vietnam vets, we’re drunks with nightmares, we’ve got Buckley’s.’ I look down at her, ‘Pathetic, ain’t it?’

  ‘So, what are you saying?’ she says fiercely, ‘That you’re not up to it?’

  I look up, surprised. ‘Well, yeah. The fuzz will be onto us in a flash. What the boys are proposing is against the law, flogging dope’s illegal.’

  ‘So smoking isn’t?’ she snaps back. ‘You’re having a fair whack at being on the wrong side of the law as it is.’

  I don’t have an answer. ‘That’s different,’ I mumble, feeling stupid, ‘A user and a dealer, that’s not the same thing in the eyes of the law.’

  ‘And what about Anna?’

  I say nothing. Then I look at her. ‘Wendy, it ain’t gunna work. Don’t you understand? We’re past it. We’re a bunch a hasbeens.’

  She smiles, ‘I’m going to make you a cup of coffee, Thommo. And then I’m going to tell you a story a young bloke once told me. A young man whom I loved, who wasn’t afraid of anything.’

  She gets up and I shout after her, ‘Now, Wendy, don’t start that shit!’

  She brings me a cappuccino. I like it hot enough to burn my tongue, even though Spags Belgiovani says good Italian coffee should be warm and strong, too much heat and the flavour goes. He says that in Italy there are blokes who get sort of like a degree in coffee making, they’re called baristas. Wendy puts it down in front of me, the steam rising through the brown speckled foam.

  ‘This young bloke only told me once and I remember every word,’ she begins. ‘I’ll tell it in my own words. Right?’

  ‘Leave it off, Wendy!’

  But she ignores me, ‘There’s big excitement at Nui Dat, Col Joye and Little Pattie are going to give a concert. The Americans have concerts quite often, but the Australians are not invited, this is the first time for the Australians. Their very own performers, Little Pattie is a real cracker and Col Joye a big star. D Company is in camp and the troops have been putting their spare greens under their mattresses to sharpen them up a bit. On the day they’ll all shave a bit closer, comb their hair, clean their fingernails. They haven’t seen a blonde in a miniskirt for over a year and their eyes are hungry.’

  ‘Wendy, don’t go there, mate!’ I warn again.

  She puts up her hand. ‘Shush, Thommo!’ I can see she’s gunna go on and it’s gunna hurt and it’s not like her. She’s stepping over our unspoken line and I don’t know why. The coffee suddenly tastes like shit.

  ‘On the seventeenth of August at 2.50 a.m. the VC mortar-bomb the base. About a hundred mortar shells and recoilless-rifle shells are fired. Quite a few are wounded, twenty-three I think, one soldier later dies. Most of the Task Force are stood-to in case there is a Viet Cong attack. They’re not long at Nui Dat and the defences are not finished and they’re expecting to see Viet Cong pouring into the base.’

  Even though I’m far from happy with Wendy’s bringing up all this past shit, I’m impressed at how she’s remembered everything. I mean, how would a sheila remember a name like ‘recoilless-rifle’?

  ‘Your platoon is on duty minding A Company’s perimeter whilst they are out on patrol. Those not on sentry at that moment were playing a crown-and-anchor game in the A Company headquarters and took no notice of the mortars, which were on the other side of the base. At the time you thought they were your own. The talk all night is of the concert party due in the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Wendy, why are you doing this?’ I ask.

  ‘You’ll see,’ she says. Her voice is quite calm but I can see her eyes, her big blue eyes are not smoky and soft like they usually are, they’re hard, bright, like you can see the sharp little lights in them. She goes on. ‘Well, the concert is on the eighteenth and it’s still all anticipation among the troops. Then on the morning of the concert Harry Smith, your company commander, tells D Company you’re going out on a routine patrol to relieve B Company, who’d gone out the previous morning to search for the enemy, follow them and, if possible, destroy them. The assumption is that the base was attacked by a small bombarding team of Viet Cong, who are well away by now.’

  Wendy stops, then says, ‘You can imagine how the blokes in your platoon feel. No concert, no Little Pattie in a miniskirt. It’s the monsoon season and the leeches and every creepy-crawly in Vietnam is out for a taste of good red Aussie blood. You haven’t been long back inside the wire anyway and you’re pretty upset. Shorty tells your platoon that B Company’s found a few VC mortar positions but hasn’t engaged the enemy. It’s a routine patrol and it’s just bad luck D Company got the short straw.’

  Wendy giggles. ‘I remember you saying Animal tried to throw a sickie. He claimed he’d sprained his ankle in the latrine. That way he’d be unfit for the patrol but would still be able to attend the concert.’

  I can’t help it and I laugh, ‘Bongface asked him if he’d been using his toes to wank with! Animal has been telling half the camp for days what he’d personally like to do to Little Pattie if he could get her on her own for just ten minutes. It wasn’t for repeatin’ I can tell ya!’

  Wendy’s only heard me tell of this once, just after I got back from Vietnam. Animal, by the way, was no coward, he was a brave warrior who never shirked his share. It’s just that in his priorities he always put pussy before valour.

  Wendy continues. ‘You slog through thick, tangled, wet scrub to the east. Every now and then you catch snatches of the Col Joye band warming up and you’re none too happy. You relieve B Company, who are anxious to catch the concert.’

  ‘Righto, that’s enough!’ I say to Wendy. ‘Congratulations, I dunno how you’ve remembered all that shit and, what’s more, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, love, but we’re not going no further.’

  Her voice is perfectly calm, but it’s her school teacher’s voice, ‘I’ll make you another cappuccino, Thommo,’ she says, rising from the chair. ‘Don’t move. Stay right where you are.’

  She goes out back first then comes back to the cappuccino machine and soon enough she puts the coffee down in front of me. She also carries a tea towel under her arm and it looks as though she’s used it to wrap something. Sitting down, she puts the bundle onto her lap. ‘Now, where were we?’ she says, smiling up at me all innocent like.

  ‘Wendy, you know where. Just stop it, will ya!’

  ‘Long Tan? Well, we’ve got to discuss it, Thommo.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes.’ She says it hardly above a whisper, looking straight at me.

  ‘No, we bloody don’t!’

  ‘Thommo, I’ve been through the nightmares, the depressions, the days without speaking to me. Me waking up in the middle of the night and you’re curled up like a baby weeping. You’ve hardly made love to me since Anna was born.’ She stops and catches her breath, ‘Now, I know you blame it all on Agent Orange, and you’re right for some of the stuff that’s going on. Anna also. But not all of it. Something happened at Long Tan, not just the battle, which was hell enough, but something else, something more personal. In your nightmares you scream about a machine gunner. “The machine gunner! The fucking machine gunner!” you yell out over and over and then you begin to weep like a small boy. What is it, Thommo? What happened,
Thommo?’

  I shrug, trying to stay calm, ‘It’s just stuff coming out, how do I know?’

  Wendy is silent, then she brings up the dish cloth from her lap and puts it on the table and opens it. Inside is the medal I won at Long Tan. Then there’s a light blue rectangle with the gold border about two or three inches long and about three-quarters of an inch wide. The last item is a little child’s doll with Asian eyes.

  The blue rectangle is the United States Presidential Unit Citation worn above the right-hand breast pocket. We were dead chuffed that the Yanks had given us a recognition for bravery. I can still remember the opening words of the citation:

  By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States and as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, I have today awarded the Presidential Unit Citation (Army) for extraordinary heroism to D Company, Sixth Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, The Australian Army.

  D Company, 6th Battalion, was only the second Australian army unit to be awarded the Presidential Citation, the first was to the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment for the Battle of Kapyang in the Korean War.

  ‘What’s this about?’ I ask angrily, pointing at the stuff in front of her.

  ‘Thommo, please tell me?’ I can see she’s about to cry.

  ‘We won,’ I say, real sharp. ‘One hundred and eight men in D Company, most of us nashos, against 2500 North Vietnamese Army and VC troops and we won. That’s all there is to know.’ I point to the little blue ribbon, now I’m speaking sarcastic like, ‘We were flamin’ heroes, even President Lyndon B. Johnson, him of the “all the way with LBJ”, said so.’

  Wendy won’t let go, ‘Thommo, I know what happened at the Battle of Long Tan, it was our greatest victory in Vietnam. You were heroes, one and all.’ She looks at me, her eyes pleading, ‘What happened to you that day?’

  Suddenly, looking into Wendy’s sad blue eyes, I want to throw up, only it’s a mental thing, like vomiting up fear and hurt and disgust. Without realising it, I have begun to talk, it doesn’t sound like my own voice, more like a tape playing or some bloke reading from a book with me standing to one side, ready to interrupt if I want.

  ‘We moved east from the base and eventually found enemy tracks that led into a rubber plantation. It’s not like the jungle where you can see ten yards if you’re lucky, where one man leads with the rest of the company following like a long snake. Here we can see 200 yards down the rows of young rubber trees. So the company breaks into open formation and it’s not long before we get the order to disperse wide, two platoons up. Our platoon spreads out to cover a frontage of 150 yards or so with two of our sections up, including mine, in arrowhead formation. Shorty, along with our platoon headquarters and our third section, is fifty yards behind us. On our left is 10 Platoon in the same formation as us. Company HQ is 100 yards or so behind the lead platoons with 12 Platoon further back in reserve. We follow the direction of a well-worn track heading east-south-east.

  ‘Harry Smith, our OC, knows what he’s doing and we respect him big. He’s trained us along Special Forces lines and we reckon we’re the fittest, hardest and most disciplined company in Vietnam. In training we earned the name “Boots Company” because we could do fast, hard marches that left the others for dead. The hit song by Nancy Sinatra, “These Boots Are Made For Walking”, becomes the unofficial D Company song. What’s more, we’re all mates willing to die for each other.’ I sort of grin at Wendy, and my proper voice interrupts, ‘Though perhaps not on this particular day, because there’s a rumour going around that the concert party is to give another performance if we make no contact with the enemy and can get back in time the next day. It was bullshit, of course, but it keeps us in hope.’

  It’s funny, I’ve never talked about the eighteenth of August 1966 before, it’s all been bottled up inside and now my voice is quite calm. Normally, just thinking about the day, I start to fall apart. Once I walked past a stand of bamboo in the local park and there must have been a bit of a breeze blow up so the bamboo creaked and I had a sudden panic attack. I mean, there wasn’t any bamboo at Long Tan, it was a rubber plantation. But the bamboo was all the jungle patrols in Vietnam wrapped up in one and suddenly I was totally spooked at the familiar sound. I ran all the way home with my hands over my ears and hid under the bed. Now, in front of Wendy, this voice just keeps coming out of me, like I’m giving a debrief or a lecture or something.

  ‘We’re walking along and mine and Macca’s section come to a road and we make a tactical crossing and move on into the plantation. So help me, unbeknownst to us in the forward section, a couple of minutes later a Viet Cong patrol comes strolling down the same road, chatting, happy as Larry. They’re sandwiched neatly between our two front sections and the platoon headquarters. Shorty is the first to see them and he opens fire with his M16, hitting one of them, and the rest dive into the rubber trees to the south-east.

  ‘Up front we hear the firing and go to ground and wait to see what’s happened. Mr Blunt, our platoon commander, comes forward and briefs me and Macca. He wants an extended line with a front of about 250 yards to go after the enemy.’

  I look up at Wendy, explaining. ‘You’ve got to understand, this is not a cautious approach, it’s an aggressive formation, we’re going after the buggers. The VC squad that walked into us may just be an isolated one or there may be a Nog camp in the area. We’re expecting nothing we can’t handle.

  ‘Our going after the VC has placed us further away from 10 Platoon and the rest of the company. Shorty comes over and says to keep in the extended line but to change direction slightly so that we can move a bit closer.

  ‘And then suddenly the shit hits the fan in a big way. We cop heavy fire on our left flank and hit the deck fast where we manoeuvre to return fire. Chunks of bark are flying through the air, the latex running down the trunks of the rubber trees, striping them with these milky-white lines.’

  I look up at Wendy again, ‘Funny, how you notice dumb things like that. We can see nothing. The tracers are coming at us but there’s nothing to fire at, just trees and the undergrowth concealing the enemy. Then I see a stream of tracers coming out of the top of the trees, like ten feet or maybe a little higher up. “Two o’clock up, the trees, about ten feet!” I shout to Mo, who’s on my left, like always. We both fire into the thick rubber leaves and so help me, three Noggies fall out of the dark green canopy and if they’d been any deader when they landed they would’ve had to have been dug up.’

  I hear Wendy laugh, but I don’t look up at her.

  ‘Then something happens we don’t expect, Charlie starts coming at us in a direct assault, we can see them emerging from the bushes in good order. Jesus, we’re the ones supposed to be the attacking force and suddenly we’re going nowhere and they’re coming at us. We hit them with everything we’ve got and they go to ground. But they keep firing at us, like they know what they’re doing.

  ‘After a while we settle down, holding our own. Thank Christ for Canungra, it’s what all those contact drills have been about. If it’s the VC, I tell myself, they’ll have a go at us and then get out. That’s their way, we’ll just have to keep giving them curry and hang on a little longer.

  ‘But this time they’re here to stay. Suddenly the plantation ahead of us lights up like a Christmas tree. The first lot were just messing around, this second bunch coming at us . . .man, they’re serious warriors. Then we realise it’s the NVA, the North Vietnamese Army. Suddenly we’re up to our eyebrows in excrement! They’re attacking in extended line, the way we’ve been trained ourselves, about two yards apart, walking at a steady controlled pace and firing from the hip. It’s straight out of the flamin’ military manual.

  ‘We knock down the first lot but the bastards keep comin’, wave after wave. They’re not the VC, not the black pyjamas, they ain’t scared of us, these bastards know how to fight. The Asian hordes are upon us. As we cut each wave down, the survivors go to ground not too far to our fron
t and continue to fire. It’s only a matter of time and we’re history.

  ‘And then the platoon’s right flank is attacked and our right-hand section is fighting for its life. The firepower coming in against us is awesome. Thousands of tiny green lights emerge from the rubber and the bush, most of it below knee height.

  ‘We’re on our bellies, there’s no moving forward or, matter of fact, in any direction, anything more vertical than a leopard crawl and you’re dead meat. We’re taking casualties as we try to move to find the best cover. We’ve never been in anything like this before. But I’ve got to say it, the blokes are still identifying targets and yelling out the location. The noise is becoming deafening, even to be heard by the bloke next to you, you have to shout. It’s amazing how much shouting goes on in a battle like this and I’m doin’ me best to try to follow it and to direct the fire accordingly.’

  I glance up, Wendy is looking at me, her eyes real soft and smoky. She looks like she’s about to cry.

  ‘It’s about this time that Mr Blunt, our platoon commander, is killed while putting his head up to see where the artillery is landing so that we can call it in closer to us.

  ‘Shorty takes over. I’m not aware of this at the time, I’m too busy trying to keep me own section intact, fighting the battle and attending to our casualties. It’s the Australian way, you don’t let a mate bleed to death for lack of attention, even in the heat of a battle.

  ‘Then quite suddenly the rain comes, the way it does in Vietnam. Nothing, then everything, the full monsoon. The sudden roar of the water even drowns the sounds of the fighting. It’s coming down in solid sheets so we can’t see more than about sixty or seventy yards. There’s Noggies, dark shapes in the downpour, still spread out, in extended line and comin’ for us. There’s no way we can hold ‘em, half our blokes are out of action and we’re running dangerously low on ammo. It’s all over, Red Rover.

  ‘But then, as Lawsy once put it, “Cometh hope from the Heavens”. We’re stuffed five different ways and crucified twice over and our artillery, which seems to have taken forever to find its range, now hits spot on. They’re dropping salvos just ahead of us. Even with the rain and the noise of battle we can hear the beautiful whistle of the shells. Then the ripping sound, like the air being torn apart, is followed by a blue flash. Kerboom! Suddenly there are Noggies being blown sky high, limbs hurled through the air, screams, headless, armless, legless torsos rolling, flying, somersaulting, bouncing, sliding in the mud. Talk about just in time!